Interview: Beach

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After a year-long hiatus, psychedelic Dublin five-piece Beach are back. The intriguing group released their beautiful new track ‘Fionn’ last week, a short song suitably poised as a teaser to get us intrigued for what’s to come. It has a certain hymnal solemnity; engrossing and oddly cathartic, with its gentle sonic warmth and disarmingly transcendental Irish vocals not too far removed from monastic chanting. Meanwhile the accompanying video is a veritable kaleidoscope of pretty visuals.

And this is just the first sign of things to come. Beach have a self-produced double A-side (recorded at Lamplight Studios) scheduled for release later this year. On first listen the singles – ‘Arabia’ and ‘Moon Smoke’ – boast characteristically rich, soaring vocals over slow-burning, lush melodies and wonderfully jarring loops of electronic sound.

Ahead of those exciting forthcoming releases it seemed a fitting time to introduce Beach to a new audience. We caught up with the band to find out more about who they are and what exactly they’ve got on the cards.

Can you tell us the basics about Beach – who are you and how did you get started?

We formed after meeting in college in 2013 and just clicked straight away after jamming together. We released our debut EP Space with the help of producer Ben Bix after just six months. We play a guitar-driven blend of psychedelia infused with elements of electronica and slacker wave.

You’ve been on hiatus for a year – what was it about ‘Fionn’ that made you decide it should be the first thing people heard after that time?

While taking a hiatus from gigging we’ve just worked on expanding our sound. The use of electronics seemed like a natural progression for us. Adding our individual influences was what drove us to evolve our sound and expression. ‘Fionn’ is being released first to give people a taster of what we’ve been working on and of what’s to come. We have been working for a few months now in collaboration with visual artist Ross Ryder who is helping us to convey visually what we are trying to say with our music. We are really excited with what he brings to the table.

Is singing in Irish going to be a recurring theme?

For us, psychedelic music is about experimentation, and this led to the lyrics for ‘Fionn’ being sung in Irish as it’s such a spiritual language – it just felt like the natural thing to do. We don’t plan a lot of what we do musically so we can never rule anything out, but singing in Irish is definitely something we’ll consider in the future.

You have singles scheduled for autumn, can you tell us a bit about that?

The two singles are along the same electronic/psychedelic lines as ‘Fionn’, with similar lyrical themes. The songs are about journeys in life, you know… the type that we live in our own head and how we perceive things. The songs are due for release in late October [with accompanying videos].

Anything else people ought to know about Beach?

2016 is going to be a busy year for Beach with more releases and sets accompanied by live visuals…expect to have your psychedelic jocks blown off!

That’s perhaps a slightly alarming way of phrasing it on their part, but on the basis of Fionn it seems a fair prediction to make – it’s an otherworldly track bursting with hints as to the band’s propensity for making woozy, wavy music. With a launch party for the singles scheduled for Button Factory on 19 November, we’d certainly recommend you keep an eye on Beach over the next few months. The five-piece look set to provide Irish music with something quite mesmerising.